[RonS1]

It's a shame that the main two people contributing possible answers to my questions appear to not have smart meters and are sceptical of them. Thank you to them however for attempting answers.

I feel I'm pretty well informed on green energy sources/systems having run solar PV since 2011. I'm using solar and batteries in conjunction with an half hourly agile smart meter tariff and automation using Home Assistant with Predbat, to achieve an average daily cost of 9 to 10 p/kWh for my electricity import.
I am optimistic that these techniques will eventually help with driving smoother greener energy generation. However the energy supply companies need to get better with providing knowledgeable staff for support and education. I'm talking to you EON Next.

[retrotecchie]

@RonS1

I started my solar journey in 2005 and completely agree that the energy companies in conjunction with OFGEM and several flavours of government just haven't got their joined up thinking hats on.

The Metering Equipment Regulations and the SMETS standards were designed by committee with no regard for either the end user and with little or no forward planning for including microgeneration in the energy mix. The communications were handed to a very expensive quango (the DCC) and were mostly based on a now obsolete technology (3g cellular) which is already being switched off way ahead of the government's 'sunset' of 2032.

It is my opinion that any smart meter being installed should be the correct model with the correct feature set for any given installation, but the current industry practice seems to be 'fit whatever is rolling around in the back of the van and hope for the best'.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by RonS1

.
I am optimistic that these techniques will eventually help with driving smoother greener energy generation. However the energy supply companies need to get better with providing knowledgeable staff for support and education. I'm talking to you EON Next.

Having heard Greg Jackson (founder of Octopus Energy) interviewed on Desert-Island-Discs it strikes me that Octopus is probably one of the few companies with the vision and understanding to fully exploit the future green energy requirements - the company having been built on this foundation

Many of the other legacy energy companies such as EOn, BG etc are attempting to jump on the band-wagon, but having come from old (analogue) supply infrastructure probably don't currently have the capability, systems or trained staff to satisfy these future development needs

Greg Jackson is the founder of Octopus Energy Group, the global energy and technology company driving the affordable, green energy system of the future. Launched in 2016, the Group now serves 7.2 million customers across 18 countries, and operates a £6bn portfolio of renewable energy assets across Europe.

Octopus drives the tech-enabled green energy transition, innovating relentlessly to make energy better for consumers and the planet. Kraken, Octopus’s proprietary green tech platform, is at the heart of the Group’s growth and is now contracted to serve over 40 million accounts across the globe, with further 10 million to follow soon.

Octopus has attracted over $2.3 billion worth of funding from international energy companies, large pension funds and global investors, and has valued the company at around $8 billion.

Greg is a serial tech entrepreneur and has built and sold a number of successful businesses before starting Octopus. He is an angel investor in a wide range of start-ups, and is a key thought leader in the UK on issues related to energy transition, energy costs and innovation..

[meldrewreborn]

The notion that by encouraging consumers to shift consumption away from peak demand times is totally correct - if successful we might get away with having fewer major power stations, and that would save us all money in the long run.
But the way smart metering has developed in the UK has been a disaster of mega proportion, with systems developed which just don’t work in many locations. It’s generally accepted that to shift consumption away from peak hours pricing will be key - but if the half hourly reading can’t get through one way will the pricing information get through from the supplier in the other direction? And how do you protect the customers from short term price spikes? I’m all for incentivising consumers to use less, but I’m far less keen on punishing those who are unable to cope with the complexity of surge pricing.
UK consumers generally have not taken advantage of their ability to switch suppliers or tariffs- many are still with the successor suppliers from pre privatisation days, and it was to protect those people from being ripped off that the price cap was introduced. Now after the energy crisis competition hasn’t properly returned and the best pricing hovers fractionally just under the price caps.

so while the visionaries dream of smart meter utopia with all the benefits a fully digitised system could bring , the current situation is that we have too many smart meters that don’t work as intended, communication hubs that need to be replaced due to obsolete technology, systems that are not responsive to customer needs, suppliers that deny that the IHD is a key part of the system and perhaps more importantly a consumer base that just doesn’t understand energy billing at all, or how to secure best value. Plus there’s still a long way to go to get to near 100% smart meter coverage as the target date for reaching that has been missed and put back more times than anyone can remember.

the theory behind smart metering was and is fine, but currently we’re all paying a lot of money for it and the real benefits have still not been achieved.

Governments have ploughed on with the plan happily enough because it’s not government funded. So they can take whatever credit there is without committing public funds. And it allows them to fend off the green lobby.

but when you consider that all this really needs is a two way connection between the meter ( and really we only need electricity meters to be smart) and your energy supplier, we have to question whether whether the system as currently employed can ever live up to the expectations of the visionaries.

[meldrewreborn]

@RonS1

I don’t think it’s a shame that @retrotecchie and I don’t have smart meters. It is a real demonstration that intelligent people can see smart metering for what it is, a very complicated and expensive system that has been poorly designed and even more badly and only partially implemented.

I’m convinced that price increases due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has done more to reduce energy consumption than smart metering ever will.